First Look: Kresley Cole’s MacRieve (July 2, 2013)

Uilleam MacRieve believed he’d laid to rest the ghosts of his boyhood. But when a brutal torture revives those ancient agonies and destroys his Lykae instinct, the proud Scot craves the oblivion of death. Until he finds her—a young human so full of spirit and courage that she pulls him back from the brink.

Seized for the auction block, Chloe Todd is forced to enter a terrifying new world of monsters and lore as a bound slave. When offered up to creatures of the dark, she fears she won’t last the night. Until she’s claimed by him—a tormented immortal with heartbreaking eyes, whose touch sets her blood on fire.

With enemies circling, MacRieve spirits Chloe away to the isolated Highland keep of his youth. But once he takes her to his bed, his sensual mate becomes something more than human, evoking his savage past and testing his sanity. On the cusp of the full moon, can he conquer his worst nightmare to save Chloe . . . from himself?

Kresley Cole’s latest Immortals After Dark book MacRieve might have been titled after Uilleam MacRieve, one of the Hot and Hotter Lykae twins, but the star of this story is Chloe Todd. Chloe Todd, also known as “Baby T-Rex,” is the star playmaker for the Seattle Reign Women’s Soccer team. At the age of five, Chloe had known that soccer would be her ultimate goal. In fact, Chloe had a way of knowing almost instantly what was going to be most important to her.

Chloe had been five when she’d watched the first women’s Olympic soccer game on TV, and the entire course of her life had changed. Later Dad would laughingly tell friends that she’d been glued to the screen like a dog watching bacon commercials.

Instead of telling him, “I’d like to play that,” or even “That’s what I’m going to do when I grow up,” she’d informed him, “That’s my sport.”

Everything in her life is going exactly as she planned and she is finally about to achieve her ultimate goal in life: to play in the Olympics. Just as she is about to leave for training camp, she overhears something that begins a chain of events that will turn everything in her life upside down—beginning with the fact that she heard her father’s phone call from across the soccer field. Even though it shouldn’t have been possible for her to hear him, he was discussing what sounds like nonsense: werewolves, someone who calls him Commander, and something about The Order. Her father is retired from the military and was never a Commander.

When she confronts her father about his phone call, his actions get even weirder. He hands her something called The Living Book of Lore and disappears into the night. Chloe seemed to be going through some changes lately, but he couldn’t possibly believe that could have anything to do with the mythical creatures listed in the book. He couldn’t possibly believe she was some kind of Lorean creature. She’s human. Her father’s human. Her mother was…wasn’t she?

When she’d gotten her period at thirteen, he’d given her a copy of The Care and Keeping of You. He’d been red-faced, gruffly saying, “Here. I’m sure you’ll put all this together.”

So what kind of life transition was she undergoing now? Instead of being red-faced, she was pale.

He handed the tome to her; a chill took her, and the tiny hairs on her nape stood up. The Living Book of Lore?

And her life just keeps getting crazier. Kidnapped by witches, she’s sold at auction and Chloe ends up in the arms of the hottest man she’s ever seen—who thinks he’s a werewolf—and who thinks she’s his mate. He might be crazy, but he is kind of sweet, well at least until he announces that not only isn’t she human, but she’s a succubus. That she will no longer eat but “draw nourishment from a partner’s sexual release.”

She stopped. “So my new feeding m.o. is to roofie men, then get them hooked on me like heroin, so they’ll keep coming back to the dealer? That’s just messed up.”

It just gets better and better. Chloe has gone from being a celebrated soccer star, a normal human soccer star, on the verge of making her Olympic dream to becoming a sex sucking parasite, and a Lore pariah, and from Mr. Hotness’s reaction, it seems that a succubus is not very popular Lore creature around the old Lykae homestead.

“I’m going to wake up, and this will all be a bad dream.” She rubbed her temples. “Is there any upside here?

One thing about Chloe is that she is no quitter. She will try anything to stop the transformation, escape her new Lykae jailer, and make it to the Olympic training camp in time to fulfill her dreams, but is it already too late?

Learn more about or pre-order a copy of MacRieveby Kresley Cole, out July 2:

Lucy Dosch writes book reviews for her blog http://ebookobsessed.com. Her e-reader has turned her love of reading into an obsession. When she is not reading, she likes to spend time with her husband and two daughters.